Canada Urged To Respect the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

On Thursday, a group of countries called on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to continue to attend to serious violations of the rights of Indigenous people in Canada and take necessary actions to push the Canadian government to correct its mistakes.

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Delivering a joint statement on behalf of a group of like-minded countries at the ongoing 48th session of the UNHRC, Jiang Duan, minister of the Chinese Mission to United Nations Office in Geneva, told the Council that Canada has for a long time pursued policies of ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide against indigenous people.

From the 1830s to the 1990s, an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly taken away from their parents and sent to residential schools in the country.

"These Indigenous children lived in harsh conditions and suffered malnutrition, many falling victim to forced labor, abuse and rape. Some even became living medical experiments against humanity. At least 4,000 Indigenous children in residential schools died of abnormal death," the joint statement said.

Currently, over 600 Indigenous communities are segregated by the Canadian government in 3,000 small and scattered "reservations" without sufficient infrastructure, job opportunities, even safe drinking water.

The joint statement also told the Council that Indigenous communities have long suffered systemic discrimination in society, and that the living conditions of Indigenous people in Canada are deteriorating.

"The policy of genocide against Indigenous people has become one of the root causes of systemic inequality, racism and racial discrimination in Canada today," the statement said.